The Christmas before my entrance at Westminster, I
remember seeing in the newspapers the names of those boys who acted in the
Westminster Play that year (1787). For one who knew nothing of the school, nor
of any person in it, it was something to be acquainted with three or four boys,
even by name; and I pleased myself with thinking that they were soon to be my
friends. This was a vain fancy in both senses of the word: by their being
selected to perform in the Play, I supposed they were studious and clever boys,
with whom I should of course become familiar; and I had no notion of the
inequality

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which station produces at a public school. It
is such that, when I came to Westminster, I never exchanged a word with any of
these persons. Oliphant, Twistleton, and Carey, were three of them. Carey was a
marked favourite with Vincent, and
afterwards with Cyril Jackson at Christ
Church; he is now Bishop of Exeter, having been head master of the school
where, at the time of which I am now writing, he was one of the monitors. It is
said that he is indebted to Cyril Jackson for his
promotion to the bench, the dean requesting a bishopric for him, or rather
earnestly recommending him for one, when he refused it for himself.
Twistleton was remarkable for a handsome person, on
which he prided himself, and for wearing his long hair loose and powdered in
school, but tied and drest when he went out; for in those days hobble-de-hoys
used to let their hair grow, cultivating it for a tail, which was then the
costume of manhood. The Westminster Play gave him a taste for private
theatricals: immediately after leaving school he married a girl with whom he
had figured away in such scenes; she became an actress afterwards in public of
some pretensions, and much notoriety, as being the wife of an honourable and a
clergyman. For a while Twistleton figured in London as a
popular preacher, which too frequently is but another kind of acting; he then
went out to India, and died there lately as archdeacon in Ceylon, where he had
latterly taken a very useful and becoming part in promoting the efforts which
are made in that island for educating and converting the natives.
Oliphant was the more remarkable person

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of the three, and would probably have risen to celebrity,
had he lived. He was from Liverpool, the son, I believe, of a tradesman, one of
the queerest fellows in appearance that I ever remember to have seen; and so
short-sighted, that we had stories of his walking into a grave in the
cloisters, and running his head through a lamp-lighter’s ladder in the
street. The boys in the sixth form speak in public, once a week in rotation,
three king’s scholars and three town boys: generally this is got through
as a disagreeable task; but now and then an ambitious fellow mouths instead of
mumbling it; and I remember Twistleton and
Oliphant reciting the scene between Brutus and Cassius
with good effect, and with voices that filled the school. After leaving
Cambridge Oliphant tried his fortune as an author, and
published a novel which I never saw; but it had some such title as “Memoirs of a Wild Goose
Philosopher.” He died soon afterwards.

His first efforts in authorship were, however, made as a
periodical essayist, before he left school. The Microcosm, which the Etonians had recently
published, excited a spirit of emulation at Westminster; and soon after I went
there, some of the senior king’s scholars, of whom Oliphant was at the head, commenced a weekly
paper called the Trifler. As the
master’s authority in our age of lax discipline could not prevent this,
Smith contented himself, in his
good-natured easy way, with signifying his disapprobation, by giving as a text
for a theme, on the Monday after the first number appeared, these words
scribimus indocti doctique.
There were two or three

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felicitous papers in the Microcosm which made a reputation for the book; indeed
Eton has never produced men of more genius than those who contributed to it.
The Trifler may in general have been upon a par
with it, that is to say, neither of them could contain anything better in
serious composition than good school boy’s exercises: but it had no lucky
hits of a lighter kind, and when forty numbers had been published, more to the
contentment of the writers than of any body else, the volume was closed and was
forgotten. The only disgraceful circumstance attending it, was that a
caricature was put forth representing Justice as weighing the Microcosm against the Trifler, and
the former with its authors, and the king as a make-weight on their side, was
made to kick the beam. This was designed and etched by James Hook, then a junior king’s scholar,
and now the very Reverend Dean of Worcester. I do not suppose it was sold in
the print-shops, but the boys were expected to subscribe for it at a shilling
each.

My first attempt to appear in print was in the aforesaid
Trifler. I composed an elegy
upon my poor little sister’s death, which took place just at that time.
The verses were written with all sincerity of feeling, for I was very deeply
affected: but that they were very bad I have no doubt; indeed I recollect
enough of them to know it. However, I sent them by the penny post, signing them
with the letter B; and in the next number this notice was taken of the
communication: “B’s Elegy must undergo some alterations, a
liberty all our correspondents must

OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.

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allow us to
take.” After this I looked for its appearance anxiously, but in
vain; for no farther mention was made of it, because no alteration could have
rendered it fit for appearance, even among the compositions of elder
schoolboys. Oliphant and his colleagues
never knew from whence it came; I was far too much below them to be suspected,
and indeed, at that time, I was known out of my remove for nothing but my curly
head.

Curly heads are not common, I doubt whether they can be
reckoned at three per cent, upon the population of this country; but luckily
for me, the present Sir Charles Burrell
(old Burrell as we then called him, a very good-natured
man) had one as well as myself. The space between Palace Yard and St.
Margaret’s Churchyard was at that time covered with houses. You must
remember them, but I knew all the lanes and passages there; intricate enough
they were, and afforded excellent cover, just in the most dangerous part, on
the border, when we were going out of bounds, or returning home from such an
expedition. The improvements which have laid all open there, have done no
service to the Westminster boys, and have deprived me of some of the
pleasantest jogging-places for memory that London used to contain. In one of
these passages was the door of a little school-master, whose academy was
announced by a board upon the front of a house, close to St. Margaret’s
Churchyard. Some of the day boys in my remove took it into their heads, in the
pride of Westminster, to annoy this academician, by beating up his quarters,
and one day I joined in the party.

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The sport was to see
him sally with a cane in his hand, and to witness the admiration of his own
subjects at our audacity. He complained at last, as he had good cause, to
Vincent; but no suspicion fell or
could fall upon the real parties; for so it was, that the three or four
ring-leaders in these regular rows were in every respect some of the best boys
in the school, and the very last to whom any such pranks would have been
imputed. The only indication he could give, was that one of the culprits was a
curly-headed fellow. One evening, a little to my amusement, and not a little to
my consternation, I heard old Burrell say that
Vincent had just sent for him, and taxed him with
making a row at a school-master’s in St. Margaret’s Churchyard; and
would hardly believe the protestations of innocence, which he reiterated with
an oath when he told the story, and which I very well knew to be sincere. It
was his curly head, he said, that brought him into suspicion. I kept my own
counsel, and did not go near the academy again.

At a public school you know something of every boy in your
own boarding-house, and in your own form; you are better acquainted with those
in your own remove (which at Westminster, means half a form); and your
intimacies are such as choice may make from these chances of juxta-position.
All who are above you you know by sight and by character, if they have any: to
have none indicates an easy temper, inclined rather to good than evil. Of those
who are below you, unless they are in the same house, you are acquainted with
very few, even by name. The

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number, however, of those with
whom you are more or less brought in contact, is such, that after-life seldom
or never affords another opportunity of knowing so many persons so well, and
forming so fair an estimate of human nature. Is that estimate a favourable one?
and what says my own experience? Of the three hundred boys who were my
contemporaries during four years (about fifty, perhaps, being changed annually)
there were very few upon whose countenance Nature had set her best
testimonials. I can call to mind only one wherein the moral and intellectual
expression were in perfect accord of excellence, and had full effect given them
by the features which they illuminated. Those who bore the stamp of
reprobation, if I may venture to use a term which is to be abhorred, were
certainly more in number, but not numerous. The great majority were of a kind
to be whatever circumstances might make them; clay in the potter’s hand,
more or less fine; and as it is fitting that such subjects should be conformed
to the world’s fashion and the world’s uses, a public school was
best for them. But where there is a tendency to low pursuits and low vices,
such schools are fatal. They are nurseries also for tyranny and brutality. Yet,
on the other hand, good is to be acquired there, which can be attained in no
other course of education.

Of my own contemporaries there, a fair proportion have
filled that place and maintained that character in the world, which might have
been expected from the indications of their boyhood. Some have manifested
talents which were completely latent at that time;

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and
others who put forth a fair blossom have produced no fruit. But generally
speaking, in most instances where I have had opportunity of observing, the man
has been what the boy promised, or, as we should say in Cumberland, offered to
be.

Our boarding house was under the tyranny of W.
F——. He was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in
plain truth, a great brute; as great a one as ever went upon two legs. But
there are two sorts of human brutes—those who partake of wolf-nature or
of pig-nature, and F—— was of the better breed, if it be
better to be wolfish than swinish. He would have made a good prize-fighter, a
good buccaneer, or, in the days of Coeur de
Lion or of my Cid, a good
knight, to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty good
will. Every body feared and hated him; and yet it was universally felt that he
saved the house from the tyranny of a greater beast than himself. This was a
fellow by name B——, who was mean and malicious, which
F—— was not: I do not know what became of him, his
name has not appeared in the Tyburn Calendar, which was the only place to look
for it, and if he has been hanged, it must have been under an alias, an
observation which is frequently made when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows.
He and F—— were of an age and standing, the giants of the
house, but F—— was the braver, and did us the good office
of keeping him in order. They hated each other cordially, and the evening
before we were rid of “Butcher B——”,
F—— gave the whole house the great satisfaction of
giving him a good thrashing.

OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.

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It was so obviously impossible to put Latin and Greek into
F——, at either end, even if there had been any use in
so doing, that no attempt was made at it. The Greek alphabet he must have
known, but he could have known nothing more of Greek, nor indeed of any thing
else, than just to qualify him for being crammed to pass muster, at passing
from one form to another; and so he was floated up to the Shell, beyond which
the tide carried no one. He never did an exercise for himself of any kind; they
were done by deputy, whom the fist appointed; and after awhile it was my ill
fortune to be promoted to that office. My orders were that the exercises must
always be bad enough; and bad enough they were: I believe, indeed, that the
habit of writing bad Latin for him spoilt me for writing it well, when, in
process of time, I had exercises of the same kind to compose in my own person.
It was a great deliverance when he left school. I saw him once afterwards, in
the High Street at Oxford. He recognised me instantly, stopped me, shook me
heartily by the hand, as if we had been old friends, and said,
“I hear you became a devilish fine fellow after I left, and
used to rowDodd (the usher of the house) famously!”
The look and the manner with which these words were spoken I remember
perfectly; the more so, perhaps, because he died soon afterwards, and little as
it was to have been expected, there was something in his death which excited a
certain degree of respect, as well as pity. He went into the army, and perished
in our miserable expedition to St. Domingo, where, by putting himself forward
on all

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occasions of service, and especially by exerting
himself in dragging cannon when the soldiers were unequal to the fatigue, he
brought on the yellow fever, and literally fell a victim to a generosity and
good-nature which he had never been supposed to possess.

That fever proved fatal to a good many of my Westminster
school-fellows, who, some of them because they were fit for the army, and
others because they were fit for nothing else, took to that profession at the
commencement of the revolutionary war. Rather a large proportion of them
perished in the West Indies. “Who the devil would have thought of my
burying old Blair!” was
the exclamation of one who returned; and who of the two might better have been
buried there himself. Blair was a cousin of the present
Countess of Lonsdale, and I was as
intimate with him as it was possible to be with one who boarded in another
house: though it would not have been easy to have found a boy in the whole
school more thoroughly unlike myself in everything, except in temper. He was,
as Lord Lonsdale told me, a
spoilt-child—idle, careless, fond of dogs and horses, of hunting rats,
baiting badgers, and above all of driving stage-coaches. But there was a jovial
hilarity, a perpetual flow of easy good spirits, a sunshine of good humour upon
his countenance, and a merriment in his eye, which bring him often to my mind,
and always make me think of him with a great deal of kindness. He was
remarkably fat, and might have sat for the picture of Bacchus, or of Bacchus’s groom; but
he was active withal.

OF ROBERT SOUTHEY.

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Blair spent one summer holidays with his
mother Lady Mary, at Spa, and used to
amuse me greatly by his accounts of the place and the people, and the delight
of travelling abroad, but above all by his description of the French
postilions. He had brought back a postilion’s whip, having learnt to
crack it in perfection; and that French flogger, as he called it, did all his
exercises for him: for if Marsden, whom he had nominated
to the office of secretary for this department, ever demurred when his services
were required, crack went the French flogger, and the sound of what he never
felt produced prompt obedience. The said Marsden was a
person who could have poured out Latin verses, such as they were, with as much
facility as an Italian improvisatore performs his easier
task. I heard enough about Spa, at that time, to make me very desirous of
seeing the place; and when I went thither, after my first visit to the field of
Waterloo, it was more for the sake of poor Blair than for any other reason.
Poor fellow, the yellow fever made short work with his plethoric frame, when he
went with his regiment to the West Indies. The only station that he would
thoroughly have become, would have been that of abbot in some snug Benedictine
abbey, where the rule was comfortably relaxed; in such a station, where the
habit would just have imposed the restraint he needed, he would have made
monks, tenants, dependants, and guests all as happy as indulgence, easy
good-nature, and hearty hospitality could make them. As it was, flesh of a
better grain never went

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to the land-crabs, largely as in
those days they were fed.

There was another person in the remove, who, when he
allowed himself time for such idle entertainment, was as fond of Blair’s conversation as I was (our
intercourse with him was only during school-hours), but to whom I was attached
by sympathies of a better kind. This was William
Bean, the son of an apothecary at Camberwell, from which place
he walked every day to school, a distance of more than three miles to and fro.
He had a little of the cockney pronunciation, for which
Blair used to laugh at him and mimic him; his
appearance was odd, as well as remarkable, and made the worse by his dress. One
day when he had gone into the boarding-house with me, Dickenson (the present member for
Somersetshire, a good-natured man) came into the room; and fixing his eyes upon
him, exclaimed with genuine surprise, “O you cursed quiz, what is your
name?” One Sunday afternoon, when with my two most intimate
associates (Combe and Lambe) I had been taking a long ramble on the
Surrey side of the river, we met Bean somewhere near the
Elephant and Castle returning home from a visit, in his Sunday’s suit of
dittos, and in a cocked-hat to boot. However contented he might have been in
this costume, I believe that, rather than have been seen in it by us, he would
have been glad if the earth had opened, and he could have gone down for five
minutes to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. However, the next morning, when he threw
himself upon our mercy, and entreated that we would not say that we had

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met him in a cock and pinch, my
companions promised him, as willingly as I did, to be silent.

With this quizzical appearance, there were in Bean’s swarthy face, and in his dark
eyes, the strongest indications of a clear intellect, a steady mind, and an
excellent heart; all which he had in perfection. He had been placed at
Westminster in the hope of his getting into college; but being a day scholar,
and having no connections acquainted with the school, he had not been put in
the way of doing this, so that when the time came for what is called standing out, while all the other candidates were in the
usual manner crammed by their helps, Bean stood alone,
without assistance, and consequently failed. Had the mode of examination been
what it ought to be, a fair trial of capacity and diligence, in which no
cramming was allowed, his success would have been certain; and had he gone off
from Westminster to either University, he would most certainly have become one
of the most distinguished men there; every thing might have been expected from
him that could result from the best capacity and the best conduct. But he
failed, and was immediately taken from school to learn his father’s
profession. I had too sincere a regard for him to lose sight of him thus; and
several times in summer afternoons, when the time allowed, walked to Camberwell
Green just to see and shake hands with him, and hurry back. And this I
continued to do as long as I remained at Westminster.

In 1797 or 1798, he stopped me one day in the street,
saying he did not wonder that I should have passed

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without
recognising him, for he had had the yellow fever three times, and not having
long recovered, still bore strong vestiges of it in his complexion. He had gone
into the army in his professional line, and had just then returned from the
West Indies. I never saw him more. But going along Camberwell Green some ten
years ago, and seeing the name still over the door, I went in and inquired for
him of his brother, who immediately remembered my name, and told me that
William had been doing well in the
East Indies, and that they soon hoped for his return; upon which I left a
message for him to be communicated in their next letter, and my direction,
whenever he might arrive. Shortly after this I became acquainted with poor
Nash, whose father’s house was
nearly opposite to Bean’s; and to my great pleasure
I found that Nash knew him well, had seen him at Bombay,
and spoke of him as having proved just such a man as I should have expected,
that is, of sterling sense and sterling worth. You may imagine how I was
shocked at learning subsequently, through the same channel, what had been his
fate. Tidings had been received, that going somewhere by sea (about Malacca I
think) upon a short passage, with money for his regiment, of which he acted as
pay-master at that time, for the sake of that money he had been murdered by the
Malay boatmen.

He had saved 5000l. or 6000l. which he left to his mother, an unhappy and unworthy
woman who had forsaken her family, but still retained a strong affection for
this eldest son; and wished, when he was a boy, to withdraw him from his
father. With

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that view she came one day to Westminster,
and waited in the cloisters to way-lay him when the school was over. A scene
ensued which was truly distressing to those who felt as they ought to do, for
he flew from her, and both were so much agitated as to act and speak as if
there had been no spectators. I was not present, but what I heard of it
strengthened my regard for him; and I had his situation with respect to his
mother in my mind when certain passages in Roderick were written.

Dr. Pinckland has mentioned him with
respect in his notes on the West
Indies, as one of the assistants in some military hospital in which
the doctor was employed. I was pleased at meeting with this brief and
incidental notice of his name while he was yet living, though with a melancholy
feeling that the abler man was in the subordinate station. That brief notice is
the only memorial of one, who, if he had not been thus miserably cut off, would
probably have left some durable monument of himself: for during twenty years of
service in all parts of the globe, he had seen much, and I have never known any
man who would more certainly have seen all things in the right point of view,
morally as well as intellectually. Had he returned I should have invited him
hither, and he would have come; we should have met like men who had answered
each other’s expectations, and whom years and various fortunes, instead
of alienating, had drawn nearer in heart and in mind. That meeting will take
place in a better world.

William Bean (1770 c.-1813)
The eldest son of an apothecary at Camberwell Green; he was educated at Westminster
School where he knew Robert Southey, and was doing military service as a physician when he
was murdered in the far east.

Henry Blair (1768-1794)
The son of Charles Blair and Mary Fane, daughter of the eighth earl of Westmoreland; he
was educated at Westminster School and was a military officer who died of fever in the West
Indies.

Lady Mary Blair [née Fane] (1809 fl.)
The daughter of Thomas Fane, eighth Earl of Westmorland; she married Charles Blair and
was a traveler and botanist.

Sir Charles Merrik Burrell, third baronet (1774-1862)
Educated at Westminster and Cambridge, he was a Conservative MP for New Shoreham
(1806-62), known as “father of the House of Commons.” Robert Southey was his classmate at
Westminster.

William Carey (1769-1846)
Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, he was headmaster of Westminster
School (1803-14), bishop of Exeter (1820), and bishop of St Asaph (1830).

Cid [Rodrigo D'Az de Vivar] (1030 c.-1099)
Spanish hero who defeated the Moors at Valencia; his deeds were recorded in the
twelfth-century Poema de mio Cid and the play by Corneille.

Edward Combe (1773 c.-1848)
Educated at Westminster (where he was a friend of Robert Southey) and Christ Church,
Oxford, he was perpetual curate of Barrington, Somerset (1810-48).

William Dickinson (1771-1837)
Educated at Westminster, Christ Church, Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, he was a Whig MP for
Ilchester (1796-1802), Lostwithiel (1802-1806), and Somersetshire (1806-1831).

James William Dodd (1761 c.-1818)
The son of the actor of the same name; educated at Westminster and Trinity College,
Cambridge, he was an usher at Westminster School and rector of North Runcton, Norfolk
(1811).

James Hook (1772 c.-1828)
The elder brother of Theodore Hook; he was educated at Westminster and St. Mary Hall,
Oxford; he published novels and was dean of Worcester (1825).

Cyril Jackson (1746-1819)
Educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, when he succeeded William
Markham as dean in 1783.

Thomas Davis Lamb (1775-1818)
The eldest son of Thomas Phillipps Lamb of Rye; educated at Westminster School (where he
was a friend of Southey) and Christ Church, Oxford, he was afterwards secretary to Lord
Liverpool.

John May (1775-1856)
Wine merchant and close friend of Robert Southey; after the failure of the family
business in Portuguese wines he was a bank manager in the 1820s.

Edward Nash (1778-1821)
English painter who after spending time in India befriended Robert Southey and
accompanied him on his travels.

Robert Oliphant (1769 c.-1792)
The son of Laurence Oliphant, a Liverpool merchant; he was educated at Westminster and
Trinity College, Cambridge, and published a play. The Learned Lady, or,
Double Reform (1789).

George Pinckard (1768-1835)
Educated at Edinburgh University and Leiden, he was an Army physician who served with Sir
Ralph Abercromby in the West Indies and afterwards practiced in London.

Samuel Smith (1732 c.-1808)
Educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was headmaster at Westminster
(1764-88) and prebendary of Peterborough (1787-1808).

Thomas James Twisleton (1770-1824)
The son of Thomas Twisleton, seventh baron Saye and Sele, he was educated at Westminster
School and was vicar of Blakesley, Northamptonshire, and archdeacon of Colombo in
Ceylon.

William Vincent (1739-1815)
Educated at Westminster and Trinity College, he was headmaster of Westminster School
(1788); his A Defence of Public Education (1801) ran to three
editions. He was Dean of Westminster (1803-15).